RoboColumbus-Plus Remote Location Guidelines and Rules Update

The RoboColumbus-Plus competition page has been updated with guidelines detailing how to join this year’s competition from a remote location. DPRG hopes that the many friends and potential friends who can’t travel to the local Dallas competition can join by setting up a remote course and using Google Meet to participate in the fun and challenges of an outdoor rover competition.

The RoboColumbus-Plus rules have been updated to add a new contest category and challenge. Participants now have the option of running their robot in the “robot-planned” category and taking the 3-waypoint challenge. In this challenge, the robot must depend completely on it algorithms to complete the course with only 3 target waypoints. The robot’s owner is not allowed to pre-walk the course during the competition or use additional waypoints besides the 3 given by the judges.

Fall Competition 2019 Highlights

The FALL competition for 2019 has come and gone. It was casual, exciting, and a lot of fun. Great progress was shown by several competitors.

Some highlights were:

  • Ross Melbourne’s Donkey Car completed 20 flawless laps (score: 80) within the 5-minute time limit of the Donkey Car competition on a course with an inside boundary length of ~50 feet (course is visible in the image above) . Unfortunately we lost the video of the 1st run, but see the video for the 2nd run below.
  • Carl Ott, Ray Casler, and Clay Timmons were all able to finish the Challenge Line Following course with 4 interventions. Each competitor showing great progress from previous attempts. Carl was able to reach block 5D before requiring an assist.
  • Carl Ott debuted his modified version of the 2016 Club Robot in the Quick Trip competition, taking first place with a perfect score of 7 in a time of 14.77 seconds.
  • Scott Gibson continued to rule the 6-Can competition, collecting all 6 cans in 1:42 minutes.